November, before the 7th, 1905

Source: Lenin Collected Works XVI, p. 240
Date: 1905

"ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL MANIFESTO OF NICHOLAS THE LAST" 235

Yet still we can in a certain sense triumph!
Of course, not as the liberals do, inclined to premature jubilation, who see in each, the most dubious victory a reason to flee the field of struggle. No, we can triumph, understanding the true significance of the present moment... The Tsar's manifesto testifies with utmost clarity to one acquisition which cannot be taken away. This manifesto is a funeral dirge for the Tsar's previous manifesto, it is a funeral knell for this notorious Duma, for this entire bureaucratic constitution! Before the "elections" to this monstrous "people's representation" had even begun, the whole of this Duma farce has been destroyed, swept away, trampled, shattered, transformed into nothing by the unanimous city* proletariat, which has risen throughout the country, from Petersburg to Odessa, from Kaunas and Lodz to Krasnoyarsk! The people are liberated from the torment of endless stages, from the unbearable vicissitudes of liberal wrangling and bickering with autocracy. The path to genuine freedom is shortened, purified, opened purely through the revolutionary way.

"And all this — the work of the conscious vanguard of the Russian proletariat, the work of social democracy!"

"And this time events unfolded much as they did in that memorable January week. The Petersburg proletariat, and then the whole Russian proletariat, rose up at precisely the moment when the liberal and democratic campaign of banquets was beginning to exhaust itself in its impotence, in its internal fragility. The liberals were already ready to spoil the cause of freedom entirely, when the proletariat intervened and with one blow pushed the whole cart forward. And so now, Russian liberalism and democracy were once again already ready to stumble over a straw, to stumble on the Duma campaign, to wreck the cause of revolution for a considerable period of time. The gentlemen zemstvo people and together with them various other "democratic" heroes had altogether already decided, despite all their protests, to taste the apple offered to them by Bulygin, to participate in the "constitution" which they had just rejected with indignation, to set about with grace the "electoral" agitation. The liberals had altogether already decided to deliver their great thunderous liberal speeches in the "Duma" in defense of the people, who were to remain on the sidelines, gazing from afar at the Duma. But the city worker rose — this time under the conscious and firm leadership of social democracy — and declared: No, gentlemen, I would rather manage the affairs myself with my own hands! And it took only one week of heated agitation, one week of magnificent mass strike, for the "charm" of the Bulygin Duma to crumble to dust!"

1 See *Vorwärts* No. 306 from November 1, 1905, "Das neue Verfassungsmanifest Nikolaus des Letzten."

*TO AN UNFINISHED NOTE "VALUABLE ADMISSIONS"
NOVEMBER, AFTER THE 7TH, 1905, STOCKHOLM

EXCERPTS FROM AN ARTICLE IN "LE TEMPS" "CONSTITUTIONALISTS AND SOCIALISTS"

Le Temps, November 11. A letter from a "special correspondent" from Petersburg dated November 5 is very instructive. Heading: "Constitutionnalistes et socialistes."

"It is difficult to orient oneself amid the storm," begins the correspondent, however——

"One point stands out clearly: the distinctly socialist character of the agitation which preceded the granting of the manifesto and which followed it. Red flags, songs of the Marseillaise, revolutionary speeches — one saw and heard nothing else. The people have indeed just won a great constitutional victory, but they owe it to the entry into the arena and the deployment of socialist forces. The railroad strike and the general stoppage of economic life accomplished more for them in one week than the constitutional party of Moscow had accomplished in six months of effort.

"This sudden impulse reveals the force hitherto latent of a party which one did not know to be so strongly organized nor so resolutely prepared to use the means of pressure at its disposal;... it emphasizes above all the necessity of a sharp turn to the left, if those who govern wish to remain at the helm. Russian power has understood this and Count Witte understands it even more when..."